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Dreaming up interesting hardware peripherals has been a challenge for decades now. Some, like the Xbox Kinect, are cool but bungled in execution; others, like the Wii remote, are gimmicky but capture an audience anyway. Innovation is not enough when it comes to add-ons – the experience needs to be exceptional as well. And Sony may be onto something with PlayStation VR.

Virtual reality has always been a concept with an inherent intrigue to it – it's something that we've read about in sci-fi novels for eons. But now it's, ahem, a reality; virtual reality was absolutely everywhere at PAX East. With at least two dozen booths dedicated to the fledgling technology, it's fascinating to see just how far the format has come in a short period of time. And while it's not due out until October, PlayStation VR is definitely leading the charge – from a mainstream consumer perspective at least.

And PAX East proved that developers are backing VR hard. Dozens of games were on display across all three commercial headsets, and there are hundreds more either already out or in development – the future looks bright. Of course, this was also true of Kinect and PlayStation Move when the peripherals were backed hard, and neither managed to cultivate a particularly compelling library. Sony needs to nurture the cream of the crop for its platform.

Here are two observations we had coming out of last week's convention:

Experiences

VR's success is going to stem from meaningful experiences. Both the Kinect and PlayStation Move did have compelling titles in their libraries, but they were woefully underused. However, there's potential for PlayStation VR to offer more exciting experiences than both of the above add-ons combined.

The tech is so immersive that it's hard not to be excited – as evidenced by several other people that we spoke to at the show. But we're still very much in the novelty phase, and Sony needs to ensure that beyond that it has compelling games or experiences in the pipeline that are going to want to keep people coming back to their headset time and time again.

This will be the real challenge long-term.

Improvement

Ensuring that said meaningful experiences launch on PlayStation VR will be tough, but there's one advantage that the peripheral has in its locker: it's not hard to imagine any game being improved by the immersion that VR enables.

Picture playing No Man's Sky or Alien: Isolation on the headset. We must stress that these games aren't confirmed, but it's easy to imagine yourself in the Sevastopol Station, peeking around corners or crawling through vents. The same is true of Hello Games' hotly anticipating space-faring sim – the sense of discovery would feel immense in VR.

Unlike motion controls, then, the peripheral lends itself to immersive experiences easily – Sony just needs to ensure that they get made.

Conclusion

Personally, we reckon that they will. PlayStation VR is still in its infancy, of course, but there are so many games in production for the platform – and VR in general – that the support from the wider development community appears to be in place. If that continues, then we have no doubt that the medium will reach its full potential.

VR's off to a strong start, but the exciting thing is that we still have oh so far to go.